Expedition to the Ruins
by erttheking
Summary: A Council expeditionary ship activates a Mass Relay to explore the space beyond. There they find Earth, devastated by nuclear war, with not a single person living on it. But something is odd about it. Patreon sponsored story.


Ismeda T'doari gazed around the bridge of the Turian expedition vessel, Iron Will. Spectres normally weren't involved in deep space exploration, but today's expedition was the type that warranted the attention of someone like her. The reactivation of a Mass Relay, a primary relay at that. A monumental event that the Council had performed lightly since the Rachni Wars, and which required certain precautions to be taken. There would be another Mass Relay on the far side of wherever this one would take them and the fact that no unknown ships had been spotted in this area. One was that there was simply no one there to activate it, but another was that there was an unknown force on the far side that simply hadn't figured it out. Steps had to be taken in case that unknown force was hostile.

And so, a failsafe had been introduced. Fusion warheads had been planted onto the Mass Relay with a dead man's switch included. If the Iron Will didn't come back through the Mass Relay within a day, it would detonate. It would also detonate if anything other than the Iron Will came back through the relay without a kill code being sent through first. If the far side of the relay was deemed a threat or the dead man's switch was triggered, the bombs would detonate, destroying the Mass Relay and forever sealing that portion of the galaxy off from the Council. It would destroy the system the relay was located in, an action that would be a war crime of the highest caliber in a populated system, but settlements were not permitted in systems with inactive Mass Relays for this specific reason. Even if the public didn't know the true reasoning behind the law, thinking it was simply so that civilians weren't in an area where unknown aliens could potentially evade. They were half right.

"Charges set, dead man's switch is ready to go," the XO of the ship reported. The captain of the ship nodded and turned in his chair to look at Ismeda. She had been given the honor of the VIP seat that was directly next to the captain's chair, a move that, according to the captain, had effectively made her the third in command on the ship. It was a policy she didn't quite get, and from what she had been told in her briefing was an old Turian custom and a sign of deep respect.

"We're ready to begin the expedition whenever you are," the captain, Camitus Scrilinus, said. "I pray that this ends with you bringing good news back to the Council. I'd love nothing more than to come back this way in five years to see how the new colonies are developing."

"So would I," Ismeda said. "But I think the Council has updated the laws regarding this sort of thing recently. No colony ships are to be sent beyond relays until they've been activated and scouted for a year."

Scrilinus sighed. "Another increase is it? Well, fine. I suppose you can never be too careful when it comes to this form of expansion. The Rachni Wars only ever happened once, but no one ever wants to be the one who starts the second one." He turned to his navigators. "Check all defensive systems and scanners one last time, then begin the trip through the relay. I want a live report of everything we see as we go in." There was a chorus of confirmations from the crew as Scrininus leaned back in his chair.

"Captain, if you don't mind me asking, have you ever been in a combat situation?" Ismeda asked.

"Five times," he replied. "All of them in anti-pirate operations. Most of the times against unaffiliated groups, once against Eclipse. The organization as a whole claimed that the flotilla was rogue, but that's a standard denial tactic. Write off the losses and pretend you never had anything to do with them. Ship took a nasty broadside from a mass accelerator, we were venting atmosphere and had to seal off a lot of the starboard side of the ship, the surviving crew inside having to operate in their hardsuits. It was touch and go for a bit, but we managed to eliminate or disable any enemy ships." He glanced at Ismeda. "You?"

"I just started my tenth century, my family is pressuring me to go back to Thessia and get into politics," Ismeda replied. "You can't be an Asari commando turned Spectre that long and not see more combat than you know what to do with. Spent a lot of my early Matron years deep inside the Terminus Systems. I swear some of those planets are so bad that you can shoot a random person in the streets and there's a one in third chance they did something to deserve it. Lots of time breaking up crime syndicates that were shipping their products into Council Space, lots of time chasing down runaways, and the more and more I think about it, I spent a lot of time on Omega breaking the one rule that station has."

She gave a loud snort. "Personally I think Aria's buying into her own aura of mystique and danger a little too much. I remember when Patriarch was the one running Omega when he was the one you didn't screw with unless you wanted to end up dead. If someone can beat him, someone can beat her. Her little fiefdom isn't nearly as invincible as she thinks it is, and if I had to put credits on it, I'd say the Eclipse will do it. There are bitches a lot bigger and badder than Aria in Eclipse, and they're a lot more spread out and powerful than Aria."

She sighed. "There are well over a hundred petty warlords active in the Terminus System right now. Battling for control of cities, stations, planets, I think one or two even have a system to themselves. They all don't understand that they're just bit players compared to the Council, and the only reason we haven't marched in and toppled them is that it would be too much of a dragged out conflict fighting all of them at the same time. It's a matter of willingness, not ability."

"I don't see that changing anytime soon either," Scrilinus said. "The Terminus Systems are mass, and even if the three member species of the Council all worked in unison, it's a huge territory to hold, garrison and defend. We'd be bled dry. And that's without getting into how every warlord we knock other will be replaced by a dozen or so upstarts, scrambling to seize power in the vacuum we just made."

"I know, I know, I told you I'm over nine-hundred," Ismeda said grumpily, "you don't need to lecture me on something this basic." Part of her really did want nothing more than to bring peace and stability to the Terminus Systems. Billions of innocent people lived there, trying to carve out new lives for themselves, but people like Aria and all the rest viewed them as pawns to be used. At the very best. She bit back a sigh. Hopefully, this expedition would open up new paths for colonization, ones that were free of pirate attacks.

"Passing through the relay now," a navigator announced. There was an odd feeling vibration that shook the ship, a staple of relay travel, and it left as soon as it came. As it vanished, Ismeda could spot that the holographic displays in front of the navigator had changed. A display of the system was slowly forming in front of him. "Quite a few planets in the system sir. The Mass Relay is orbiting a dwarf planet. There appear to be eight other planets orbiting the star, four of them gas giants. After them, there's an asteroid belt and four other planets. The fourth planet from the star barely has any atmosphere, the second has one so thick that the temperature inside looks like it could melt iron, and the first has no atmosphere and is being baked by the sun. The third planet though? It looks like a garden world."

Scrilinus and Ismeda exchanged looks. "A relay with a garden world just on the other side," Scrilinus said slowly. "That's practically ideal. Set up a settlement there and it'll grow fat off the relay within a decade. Even if it has little in the way of resources, it could easily become a trading outpost."

Ismeda nodded. "We should get closer and take some samples of the atmosphere and water. See if it's fit for habitation." Despite her centuries of training and experience, she felt a little pang of excitement in her gut. A new world, ripe for colonization if it was safe. Even after her kind had explored the galaxy for three-thousand years, they had barely scratched the surface. She slid back in her chair and watched as Scrininus gave the order to approach the third planet from the sun. She had to stay vigilant though. "Any signs of sapient life?"

"Still scanning," the navigator replied. "I'm picking up some odd radiation signals from the third planet, but that could mean any number of things with scans this far out. It might just be a lack of ozone for all we know. Apart from that, we'll have to get closer before we can look at-wait." There was a loud series of beeps as yellow dots filled the navigator's display. "I'm picking up a lot of readings from the asteroid belt," he reported, pressing a few buttons and zooming in on said belt. "Lots of metallic signatures and faint pockets of residual radiation, the same kind you see at ship graveyards. No signs of Eezo though. Captain, I recommend we take a closer look at this before we continue to the garden world."

"Agreed," Scrininus said. "But only bring us to the minimum required distance for more detailed scans. We don't know what's waiting for us in there." The Iron Will adjusted its course. From the display on her armrest, Ismeda could see the ship veering away from its path to the garden planet and into one of the clusters of yellow dots that filled the asteroid belt.

"I could take a shuttle and do a boarding operation, see if I can find anything useful on board," she offered. Instantly, her mind jumped to the process that would be needed. Her armor was a hardsuit, all it would take is her helmet pressurizing in order for her to be vacuum ready. A shotgun and automatic rifle would be the best for close quarters combat from any stragglers, most likely automated, but there was always the chance of pirates.

Scrininus looked thoughtful for a second. "Not yet, but I'll order a shuttle to standby just in case," he said, typing a few keys on his own armrest before turning his attention back to the bridge. They were much closer to the flashing lights in the asteroid belt. "Better images yet?"

"Coming in in a few seconds sir," the navigator replied. "Here we go. It's...oh spirits. Sir? I'm getting confirmation of derelict ships, but their numbers-there's got to be thousands of them. The damage they've taken, a lot of them looked as if they suffered from ruptured cores, but directed burn lines and explosion damage on the outer hulls are visible all over. I think these were all warships, sir. Every last one of them."

There was a silent and heavy paused. Warships? Thousands? The only time Ismeda had heard about fleets approaching that size had been during the Rachni Wars and Krogan Rebellions. When the Council had converted the entire galactic economy into a wartime one and were throwing every last hull that they could against their enemies. Every battle that was more than a skirmish between scouts had resulted in millions dead. And now it looked like the same had happened here.

"No signs of Eezo?" Scrininius asked. The navigator nodded. "I see. In that case, I theorize that whatever species built and crewed those ships did not possess Mass Effect technology, most likely they never located any Prothean caches and therefore developed their society without FTL capabilities. Odds are, they fought amongst themselves for what resources there were in this system, and the third planet would have been their homeworld. And I have a feeling whatever war destroyed those ships ended quite badly for this species."

"There aren't any other ships in the system," Ismeda said, feeling as if she knew what the captain was thinking. "And without FTL, there's no other system that any of their craft could be but this one. Combine that with the lack of ships now compared to the size of the fleet they used to field and it paints a rather bleak picture." She gave a bitter sigh. "What's the status of the third planet?" She already knew where this was going. They were going to see a world that wasn't that different from Rakhana. Except no one had been here to rescue stragglers.

"I"m detecting signs of a healthy ecosystem, flora and fauna seem to be plentiful, but there are large barren patches," the navigator reported. "Circular shaped patches that match the patterns made by thermonuclear warheads. There are signs that life is moving back into these patches, but it's rather threadbare. I'm seeing no signs of civilization."

Ismeda sighed, leaning back into her chair. So that was it then. They had found the graveyard of an unknown race. Most likely driven to the brink during a resource crisis, they had resorted to the ultimate act of desperation and used nuclear warheads against their enemies. It had been a war that none of them had won. Ismeda had read theories about how a species could destroy itself before escaping the cradle of its homeworld, but this was cruel. This race had not made it to the stars, but it had been able to reach neighboring planets. It had been so close, yet it had fallen. She closed her eyes at the injustice of it all.

"Wait a minute. The spikes of radiation, one of them's much stronger than the rest," the navigator said. Ismeda opened her eyes, looking at the navigator in confusion. He was frantically typing into his controls. "It's emanating from one of the planet's mountain ranges, it looks like it suffered partial collapse. It's consistent with the fallout from a thermonuclear warhead, but in order for it to be this strong it would've had to have been detonated recently."

"A recent detonation?" Ismeda said. "But you said there were no signs of civilization, who detonated it? Why would they have detonated it?" She was confused. There had been a coherent, if tragic, narrative that had been slowly pieced together since they had arrived, but this was a bit of a hiccup in the theories she had been forming. "Is there a possibility that it was an old silo that lasted the years until it finally went off itself?"

"That's not impossible ma'am," the navigator replied, "but not very likely either. Thermonuclear warheads require a very specific detonation sequence, an old malfunctioning one would act more like a dirty bomb, and we're seeing far too much devastation for that to be the case. There was clearly a thermonuclear explosion inside the mountain. It would have had to been set off intentionally."

Ismeda and Scrininius looked at each other. Ismeda knew that, while neither of them knew exactly what this meant, they both knew it had nothing good to imply. "Should we make a run back for the relay? Deactivate it and make sure no one comes through?" she asked. "Maybe set up a demolition for it on this side?"

"I'm considering both options," Scrininius said, "but we can't act just yet. We've still seen no signs of life here, we can't take actions that could change the fate of the galaxy on half gleamed truths. Too much is riding on this." He looked at the far end of the bridge, deep in thought. "Are there any signs of settlements on other planets?"

"No inhabited ones," the navigator said, typing into his control panel again. "There isn't any sign of activity. There are faint readings that suggest that there might have been an outpost on the fourth planet, but if there was it was abandoned long ago." He swiped one screen to the side and brought up another. "Unsurprising. The fourth planet looks unideal for colonization. It lacks a magnetic core, barely has an atmosphere, and is rather small. The only reason a species would've tried to colonize it is if they had limited technology and had no other options. It-sir! I'm picking up heat signatures appearing at the edge of the system! Unknown ships are entering the system! And...spirits help us all, I'm not reading any Eezo from any of them!"

Ismeda blinked in disbelief. FTL travel without Element Zero? Scrininus turned his attention to his armrest, pressing a large button. A holographic display of the system appeared at his side, not as in-depth as the navigator's panel, but more than enough for an overview of the situation. Upscaled models of ships were popping into existence in a tight formation. Dozens followed dozens until they numbered at an even hundred. By Council standards, this was a full sized battlefleet. Ismeda had no idea what it meant to the species that had left that graveyard in the asteroid belt. There was a deadly silence. "Orders sir?" the navigator asked. "Should we trigger the dead man's switch?"

"Not yet," Scrininius replied. "But be prepared to retreat back to the relay the second they make any offensive movements. In the meantime, engage handshake protocol, activate first contact package, and prepare the translators. We're going to be dealing with an unknown language, I'll need it translated as fast as possible."

"At best I'll be getting you very basic sentences," the navigator said. "Even with the computers running at full power, cross-referencing syntaxes for possible structures across all known languages and attaching definitions to the words they use based on circumstances, it'd take a miracle to do any more than that."

"Basic sentences are all we need," Scrininius said, before looking at Ismeda. "I can speak for the Hierarchy, but I'll need you to speak for the Council." Ismeda nodded. "Thank you. Navigator, open a channel to all unknown ships and transmit the first contact package." There was a pause as orders were carried out, and then a loud beep as the channel was opened. "Greetings. I am Captain Scrininius, a Turian of the Turian Hierarchy, member of the Citadel Council, a galactic government that represents over half a dozen sapient species. We entered this system on an expeditionary mission, and do not seek any hostilities. We welcome contact with new species, and hope for peaceful cooperation in the future."

Ismeda cleared her throat and spoke herself. "My name is Ismeda, I am an agent of the Citadel Council myself. I can confirm Captain Scrininius's claims. We have no desire to quarrel with you, and I hope that in the coming days we can learn more about each other. My species is known as Asari, and we have a long, proud history of cooperating with other species. I hope today is the start of a new chapter in that history.

For a moment, there was no response. Then, a garbled response echoed over the COM lines. "Commodore Adler...New Galactic Empire, led by Emperor Reinhard...ruler of all of humanity...we must confer with the Emperor...unprecedented event." Large sections of the message gave way to speech that the translator could not understand and neither could anyone on the bridge. Ismeda wished that she could simply touch the minds of one of these aliens and understand their language that way. She had learned how to speak plenty of Salarian and Turian languages that way, but she doubted any new species would allow an unknown alien to touch their mind. Assuming they even had a frame of reference for telepathy, the Asari seemed to be unique in that regard.

"Please...wait...contracting." Another long pause. Ismeda couldn't help but notice the size of the alien ships. If they wanted to, they could blow them all to hell without a problem. The dead man's switch would stop them from rampaging through Council space until a counter-attack could be mounted, but she didn't like the idea of a ship full of innocents dying for no good reason. The pause stretched on for minutes. Then, finally, a reply. "...Could not reach Emperor...too short notice...Admiral Orbenstein...given approval. Would like to arrange...further negotiations. Time needed to prepare...three days."

Ismeda wanted to sink back into her chair in relief but kept herself composed. She was the third in command after all. But a sneaking fear was working its way into the back of her mind. The sheer number of warships this species had built was staggering. And they didn't need Eezo for FTL. Ismeda was glad things were going well now, but this species made her feel uneasy. She had a feeling the dead man's switch wasn't being removed anytime soon.  
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Author's Note: I'm an idiot. The set up that I had and I wrote in Blue Suns and a reference to Vido before I realized I had screwed up and had to take it all out.

Also I struggled with this one, because I wasn't sure if the Relay should be destroyed because the Council would panic at the sheer size of the fleets the New Galactic Empire fields on a regular basis (which must be a massive resource drain, considering the combined human population of Legends of the Galactic Heroes is less than 50 billion, I guess a hundred years of war will do that) and how Reinhard would react to learning about the Council.

I had to make a couple of educated logical jumps here but if I were to continue this story (which I won't, too much going on with writing already) this is how I would've done the story. Clearly, the Council isn't opposed to there being undemocratically elected, absolute rulers so long as they aren't cruel tyrants (the Turians have a benevolent society, but one where the military effectively runs everything) so I don't think they would have a problem with Reinhard being an emperor. They'd just mostly be scared at how effing big the New Galactic Empire's fleets are.

So. With that in mind, I feel like the Council would offer peace to the New Galactic Empire, and even offer them a direct seat on the Council, mainly because I think all of them would realize that asking them to downsize their fleets to well below the Council fleet sizes would not be something that would be followed. Meanwhile, the Council would have a massive upkick in fleet production. Considering the Krogan Rebellions and the Rachni Wars and the scale on which they were fought, the Council would have had to produce bigger fleets than what they're currently fielding, and they simply downsized after the war. So to quote Grunt, the Council would offer one hand and arm the other. They would probably also ask for non-Mass Effect FTL as part of a big trade agreement where they swap technology (and the Council would have a lot for the Empire too, the Empire's computing tech is very much a case of what the 80s thought the future would look like.

I also don't think Reinhard would have a lot of interest in trying to conquer the Council, mainly because it would require him to spread out his forces amongst over half a dozen races while Yang Wenli is still holed up, and his interests seem to be limited to ruling over humanity. There's an argument to be made that he would like the Council's method of ruling, and if he did want to have a say in galactic politics, being willingly given a seat on the Council would be much more direct and effective than a bloody conquest.

Though to be fair it's been ages since I watched Legends of the Galactic Heroes and there are huge chunks I don't remember. I know there's a remake out, but there are only 12 episodes out right now for a series that originally had over a hundred episodes. I'll probably binge it with my friends when it's finished.

Also, I considered having Ismeda fighting a bunch of Terrarists who were hiding in the Imperial patrol fleet and having them going ballistic upon seeing Earth being "defiled" but decided it wouldn't really add much.


End file.
